News
Controversial frac sand mining comes to Arkansas
Five years into the exploration for natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale, most Arkansans know about the hydraulic fracturing process and its links to environmental havoc, including poisoned wells and radioactive wastewater in various parts of the United States and increased earthquakes here in Arkansas. Now, a mushrooming side industry is beginning to attract national attention.
Jason Baldwin seeks to bring attention to wrongful convictions
With nonprofit 'Proclaim Justice.'
Terrible bills from the Arkansas legislature
The worst of the worst.
Church goes to school in Conway
An interesting controversy is brewing in Conway Public Schools, periodically a scene of discord as more liberal constituents object to the heavy dose of religion that powerful local churches have tried to inject into the schools, particularly in sex education short on science and long on abstinence.
Cranky are us
With the master of poignant Observers off in Washington, D.C., this Observer grabs the mike to get cranky.
It was a good week for Dawne Vandiver
Also a good week for Robert Moore, charter schools, ethics and U.S. Rep. Steve Womack. It was a bad week for equity in education and Mike Hesterly.
Kroger update needed
Kroger stores in the black and minority communities of Little Rock look like they are in Soweto, South Africa, in the '60s, particularly the one on East Roosevelt, compared to the designer stores on the fairer side of town, the more affluent side, with folks running up to customers with samples to eat.
Columns
More shut-ins
There are always Arkansas lawmakers who want more guns in circulation, and the Newtown, Conn., massacre only whetted their appetite for additional firepower. Elsewhere, this would seem counterintuitive, like asking for more flu. In Arkansas, though, tightly controlled by the National Rifle Association, it is all too predictable.
Easy call
Expansion of Medicaid — that is, providing better health care for more poor people — is exactly the sort of thing that Winthrop Rockefeller espoused in the late 1960s, when he was Arkansas's first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
A solution in search of a problem
So much easier it is to legislate based upon myth and agreeable fancy than upon hard reality. Simple, half-baked remedies serve the former well, but they wreak havoc when they are introduced into the real world.
Republican majority split on tort reform
With the Republican Party in the Arkansas legislative majority, intraparty squabbles now have higher stakes, not to mention opportunities for outsiders.
True believers
Conceived in a dream of reason, what the Internet too often reveals is mass credulousness and fathomless irrationality.
Did the alien pack?
I've never been drawn to conspiracy theories, but I kinda like this latest one — the one claiming that the recent massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn., never happened.
Taking issue
I thought it odd to see this item in the daily paper: "Because the stock markets were closed Tuesday for New Year's Day, there is no business section in today's edition." Odd not because the markets were closed — they do that from time to time — but because a newspaper referred to "today's edition."
Entertainment
2013 Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase tonight
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, or perhaps a corrupted MP3, this year's passel of showcase entries has once again proven that Arkansas is loaded with talented musicians. We had dozens of entries, and as with previous years, it was tough to winnow them down. But there's only room for 20.
The Rep brings "Gee's Bend" to the stage
The play follows a mother and two daughters in an insular Alabama community as they quilt, marry, fight and fight for their dreams.
T.J. Holmes at Philander Smith
Also, Drive-By Truckers at Revolution, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion at Revolution, Pujol and Diarrhea Planet at Stickyz, Knuckfest at Downtown Music, The Main Thing: 'The Last Night at Orabella's' at The Joint and the ASO at Robinson Center Music Hall.
Randy Harsey and the Dangerous Idiots at Vino's
Plus, Augustana Acoustic at Juanita's.
Joe schmo
Mark Wahlberg doesn't bring anything to the bland 'Broken City.'
Hogs short on talent
Let's just lay it out there at the start: this isn't Mike Anderson's fault.
Same artists, different juror
Plus some great new Delta entries.
Dining
Mr. Dunderbak's gets a second bite at the bratwurst
Return with us, ye mortals, to a time called the early 1970s. A simpler time! No cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet. Just lots of dudes with questionable facial hair, cars that looked like Cleopatra's pleasure barge, iffy fashion choices for both sexes and the stench of Old English cologne.
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